Friday, April 20, 2018

China : Global Titan

"While virtually everyone agrees that a rules-based system is essential
to managing security and trade, a power struggle is underway over who
writes and enforces them. The spectacular rise of China over the past
two decades and the relative decline of the US mean that sparks are
bound to fly. Yet most westerns are only dimly aware of what’s occurring
since the rug was so quickly pulled out from under them. The potential
for catastrophic miscalculations - including US trade actions against
China - are rising with potentially devastating cascading effects to the
global economy.""To get to grips with the seismic shifts underway, consider these five facts: First, China is in the process of surpassing the US economically. By one measure,
35 per cent of world growth from 2017 to 2019 will come from China, 18
per cent from the US, 9 percent from India, and 8 per cent from Europe.
By 2050, the top five largest global economies are most likely to be China, India, the US, Brazil, and Indonesia. Is the west even remotely prepared for this kind of world?" "Second,
China is leading the largest urbanization and infrastructure
development scheme on earth. Already in its fifth year, the $900 billion
"One Belt and One Road" (OBOR) project includes new roads, shipping
lanes and building projects stretching to over 65 countries.
The idea is to literally rewire global trade from China throughout
Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. While details are hazy, OBOR
is being financed by Chinese state banks, with a modest strategic
contribution by a new Chinese-backed AsianInfrastructure Investment Bank in partnership with other institutions.""Third,
China is set to become a global green powerhouse. China signalled its
intention to take the lead on climate change reduction after signing the
2015 Paris Climate Agreement. By 2025, most new cars in China will be fully electric vehicles. China is aggressively cutting coal usage. Already, over 60 per cent of high speed rail
in the world is in China (10 times the length in Japan, for example).
China also recently committed to achieving blue skies in all of its
major cities within three years. The changes are already being felt: Beijing air is 30 per cent cleaner this winter than last winter.""Fourth, China is also setting the global pace
on a digital economy, including cashless payments. In major cities, up
to 90 per cent of all commercial and retail transactions in convenience
stores and cafes are occurring through Alipay and Wechat.
E-commerce delivery in large Chinese cities through Alibaba is the
currently the fastest in the world. One company, Alibaba, racked up
sales of $25 billion in just one day - dwarfing the returns of so-called
Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US." "Finally, Chinese universities are also vaulting to the top of the international rankings. Two schools - Peking University and Tsinghua University - just leapfrogged from well below the top 200 to the top 30 within five years.
There are anther 40 universities that are not far behind and set to
enter the elite universities in the coming years. While Chinese are
still seeking out educations in elite schools in North America and
Western Europe, soon they won't have to."Robert Muggah, Research Director, Igarapé InstituteYves Tiberghien, Associate Professor of Political Science, Director Emeritus, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, Founding Chair, Vision 20

How China's rise and the US's decline is expected to affect the global liberal order

Image: REUTERS/Jason Lee

The world's consumers wanted greater accessibility to cheaper goods and that seemed to put to bed forever the concept of self-sufficiency in production when nations of the world produced goods that their citizens bought in a conscious effort on the part of governments to grow their industries, taking advantage of the inaccessibility of market goods from other countries and putting up bulwarks against trade and imports through customs and excise duties charges. Then came the vaunted advance of free trade and open markets and China, which altered its politics to reflect the practicality of capitalism married to communism and everything changed.

China, in a relative few short decades hollowed out the industries and manufacturing capabilities that nations depended on to provide employment for their citizens and consumer goods as well. China locked up the markets in production of just about everything, from durable goods to foods. In the process it provided employment for its colossal population, sweeping poverty away. It is sweeping the seas of marketable fish, and building infrastructure throughout Africa, the Middle East and Europe in road, rail and bridges to enable low-cost shipping to all points of the geographic compass.

Over in the industrial hub of Shenzhen, Danish firm Schmidt Hammer
Lassen Architects has proposed the planet’s biggest waste to energy
plant, designed to transform 5,000 tonnes of waste every day into power.
The plant is due to open in 2020, and it will be almost a mile wide.

At one time industrial espionage and theft of intellectual property consumed its interests in leap-frogging over other nations' research and development and taking it for their own in an unabashed stride to avail itself of the science pioneered elsewhere but ripe for plucking by a country that customarily flaunted international trade conventions in the interests of speeding along its enterprise. China, the colossus striding across the world of commerce and production in all venues of enterprise, has locked up production in essential construction materials. It undercuts its competitors and puts them out of business, then makes them dependent on what it produces.

In September this year, the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical
Telescope – FAST for short – is set to open its doors and become
operational. First proposed in the early 90s, it will become the biggest
single-aperture radio telescope on the planet, with 4,600 triangular
panels. The telescope is situated in a natural basin in Pingtang County,
Guizhou Province, to protect the project from unwanted magnetic
disruptions.

China has become the world's largest steel exporter, it controls 56 percent of the world's production of aluminum and controls 90 to 94 percent of world production of rare-earth elements. Materials required for military purposes like laser-guided missiles, the F-35 fighter jet, cellphones and similar consumer products are dependent on accessibility of rare-earth elements. A recent discovery of rare-earths deposits sufficiently plentiful to meet global demand for centuries has been discovered off Japanese waters; a rare event that gives Japan a position of superiority in that class of fundamental elements.

Although 3D printing is by no means new (nor is it emerging in China
alone), in 2014 a Chinese company called WinSun Decoration Design
Engineering managed to create a 10-house 3D-printed village in under one
day.
After printing out each of the prefabricated modules, the components
were lifted into place by a crane and were then ready to use. And in
2015, the same company created the world’s tallest 3D-printed building
at the time

In renewable energy, the industries encompassing solar panels and wind turbines now are dominated by China, as well as the nuclear power industry, and China is now looking to control of the semiconductor industry for the ultimate control of electronics and telecom, and will likely in the near future reach a 60 percent control of the market with resulting problems arising in national security in the West. And unlike in the West, in China industries are state-dependent and controlled, significant outreach arms of the communist government but unlike that of the USSR, these are productive, efficient and reliable.

China is planning to build a solar expressway for self-driving cars and
electric vehicles that will be able to charge them as they drive,
according to the Chinese newspaper Hangzhou Daily

Its territorial disputes in a belligerent move to expand its geography puts it at odds with Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Pakistan, Russia, Myanmar, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and North Korea. Its claims to the waters of the East and South China Seas and the natural resources that lie beneath those seas make it a formidable, dedicated adversary to all who might wish to dispute China's self-perceived entitlements. It is not in the business of making friends, it is in the business of making business and growing its inalienable opportunities and territories.

The Tianhe-2 is a 33.86-petaflop supercomputer which has topped the
world’s most powerful high powered computing lists for years. Developed
as part of the Chinese government’s 863 High Technology Program, the
monstrous computer was built by China’s National University of Defense
Technology. It boasts 32,000 Intel Xeon E5-2692 12C processors and has
more than 1,300 TiB of memory. Although it’s by far the most powerful in
terms of calculation capacity, critics say that it’s not as
functionally useful as other supercomputers in the US

China believes the future belongs to it, and who is there to dispute that? Its focus on Artificial Intelligence, on space exploration, on wringing all it can from places on Earth remote to its geography has seen it lay claim to Arctic resources, as a "near-Arctic" state. There is nowhere too remote under the sea, in geographic distance, in space where meteorites can be mined for raw resources, not to fall to China's attention, and potential grasp.

The world's largest floating solar power plant was completed and connected to the local power grid in China's Anhui province in May 2015.